ABSTRACT
Philippine society views education as the “great equalizer,” to the extent that it attempts to narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots in a country that is unmistakably stratified on the basis of social class. The 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that persons have the right to emigrate based on their right to life; their right to asylum in situations of great peril or denial of basic conditions of human dignity; and their right to emigrate and provide for their material well-being and that of their family. School districts in the US recruit overseas trained teachers from countries such as the Philippines to staff classrooms in inner cities and comparable high-poverty areas. As US immigrants, the people are often viewed as “problems to be solved” or mere beneficiaries of civic and pastoral services. Pope Francis was in the midst of writing his social encyclical Fratelli tutti when the COVID-19 pandemic “unexpectedly erupted”.
